Timeline Theatre Company Presents TROUBLE IN MIND Review — Trapped in a Minstrel-Show 2.0

What they most share in common is the unbridled abuse from their ironically named Director/Producer, Al Manners (Tim Decker).    With a presumption of trying to evoke deeper and more raw emotions from the actors, he bellows commands to say lines again and again, bringing even seasoned actress Wiletta to near tears.  With long strides he moves back and forth across the stage, sometimes dragging cast members to different places as he savagely critiques their every line and gesture.  It’s as though he is a giant-sized pinball that moves the pinball machine flappers, instead of vice versa. 

In successive rehearsal scenes, we watch Manners’ galaxy-sized ego command the cast to bend to his will.  For the Black cast members this becomes quite literal, as they stoop and bend their bodies to smaller statures as if to give shape to their roles as the Whites’ lessers, that this script about a lynching allots them.    

Wiletta, cast as the mother of the lynched boy at the center of the story, lobbies for a script change in order to play a character with dignity.  Manners will have none of it.  As their battle royale unfolds, any notion you might have harbored that Manners is an equal opportunity abuser vanishes.  Playwright Alice Childress deftly reveals him to be the slave overseer of his day, wielding the whip of his power.  

Timeline Theatre Production is a Primer on Whiteness

In this writer’s view, Alice Childress’ nuanced script is an enduring primer on Whiteness, as searingly insightful today as in the 1950’s, when it was first produced.  The pitch perfect direction by OJ Parson seems to let every actor in this production shine, and especially gives Shariba Rivers an opportunity to deliver a tour de force performance.  In the intimate space of the Timeline Theatre, we easily see her tears well and her facial muscles quiver.  You too may feel that Rivers’ performance is what most plants the Wiletta Mayer character of Childress’ pen in our imagination. 

A tip from this reviewer is to make time to study the dramaturg-delivered lobby display of the history surrounding the play, as is the Timeline way.  It showcases the many Black performers of Childress’ day, often trapped in roles that fed White supremacist fantasies, from Beulah to Amos of Amos ‘n’ Andy, a part we learn was played by her real-world husband at the time, Alvin Childress. The script feels painfully real, and this display drives home just how intimately Childress knew her content.

Anyone who loves theater’s ability to say something important – as lead character Wiletta Mayer craves it to do—will be well-served by changing their schedule to see this show.

Read about more Chicago plays on stages now or coming soon.